Saturday, January 5, 2013

Good Changes!

Okay, so the one down side I've found to the Renegade hoof boots is they are REALLY picky about the hooves they allow to be strapped inside them. It's a good thing I do most of Lilly's trims, or I'd be in trouble. Before I could ride today, I had to bust out the rasp and work on her hooves a little bit. To be fair, it's been about 6 weeks since Rebecca was out to trim, but still... Lilly doesn't really grow a lot of hoof. I really just had to shape them a bit, but I also trimmed her bars and scraped out some dead sole. As I was doing so, I noticed something VERY interesting! A certain someone is finally growing some hoof wall! I snapped a picture of her right front, since it had the most growth, but my camera was being a whore and wouldn't take the downward shot I wanted. So you can't really tell very well in this picture, but we have growth!

Funky angle thanks to my stupid camera...

Is it the new supplement? Perhaps the new feed? Or, could it be that we've finally been getting some rain and it's helping her hoof condition? That's the crappy thing about so many changes going on at once, but it's possible that they're all contributing. I'm just thrilled to see it, and thrilled that Lilly is eating her feed without complaint!

Speaking of feed and changes, look who is losing her giant belly!

November 19th

Today!

Again, is it the new feed or the exercise? I'm sure it's both, but I wonder if it's more the feed or the exercise... she might be consuming fewer calories, but not by much. Now I'm waiting for someone to tell me she's too skinny!

We had a pretty good ride today. Lilly is making a lot of progress with her lope, and while she's not western pleasure slow, I can leave her on a loose rein and not feel like we're racing around the arena at warp speed. We've been working a lot on transitions and leads and she's making some good progress there as well. She's still a challenge, though, because she never wants to wait until I ask, so I've been trying to keep her guessing so there's less anticipation on her part. I'm not sure it's working, but I think I'm going to switch her back to the snaffle for a little while. Sometimes she works better that way.